tired of useless map reviews?

Many people look through a map and dont know where to start when trying to help others with advice or may not know what to look for. So, we all end up getting little snippets of advice that doesnt seem to mean much other then coming across as 'thats really bad' without saying how it is bad or why.

I thought I would put an example of what I do when I review a map when helping out our newer mappers. So, heres a url of one of my recent reviews.

I focus on teaching techniques that have been lost over the years because of lack of good teaching web sites and people left to just learn on their own. The key I have found is to show places in their actual map (via snapshots of hammer) and then a different method to do the same thing and explain why the change was made.

Im sure others can come up with better ways to do this, but I like to think this method is at least a good start on helping people improve.

Thanks x 4

"Understand the beauty in deviation from the standard and you understand me."

Yeah, that was a fantastic walkthrough of general mistakes people make in their early brushwork, very helpful.

It's too bad there isn't a larger group of people willing to take a look at a person's VMFs like you have, and go through it like this. So many mistakes could be corrected and, more importantly, prevented in future maps. I'd be scared to see what you'd think of my inconsistent grid-work :blushing:

The game engine doesnt just display the surface we see, it also displays all the surfaces between brushs that we cannot see. thats why when you use glass or other transparent textures, users can see the brushes behind them. It doesnt know the difference between transparent and solid brushes, so it applies this to every brush.

Click to expand...

Uh...what? Facing faces are removed, they don't even exist in the final bsp to be rendered. and the game does know the difference, it can see the $translucent key in the VMTs and VVIS ignores such brushes.

Uh...what? Facing faces are removed, they don't even exist in the final bsp to be rendered. and the game does know the difference, it can see the key in the VMTs and VVIS ignores such brushes.

Click to expand...

I was basing that on HL1 activities. I havent seen anything saying the HL2 engine does anything different. So, you may be right.

My hope for the thread is that others will try to give meaningful reviews. We tend to assume that everyone knows as mch as we do, bt it takes years to learn all that flawed, partially accurate knowledge we rely on. May as well share some of that with the newer peoples we have here. Just dont hand out those accurate secrets, have to keep something for ourselves.

"Understand the beauty in deviation from the standard and you understand me."